Perspectives Studies in Translation Theory and Practice ISSN: 0907-676X (Print) 1747-6623 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmps20 From Nuoro to Nobel: the impact of multiple mediatorship on Grazia Deledda's movement within the literary semi-periphery Cecilia Schwartz To cite this article: Cecilia Schwartz (2018): From Nuoro to Nobel: the impact of multiple mediatorship on Grazia Deledda's movement within the literary semi-periphery, Perspectives, DOI: 10.1080/0907676X.2018.1439979 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2018.1439979 Published online: 26 Feb 2018. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rmps20 PERSPECTIVES, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2018.1439979 From Nuoro to Nobel: the impact of multiple mediatorship on Grazia Deledda’s movement within the literary semi-periphery Cecilia Schwartz Department of Romance Studies and Classics, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY This study aims to highlight the impact of multiple mediatorship on Received 27 June 2017 transnational circulation by focusing on the Italian Nobel Laureate Accepted 1 February 2018 Grazia Deledda. Drawing on two previous studies, I argue that a KEYWORDS combination of field theory and social network analysis is a fruitful multiple mediatorship social network analysis; way of understanding how is performed in multiple mediatorship; semi- the semi-peripheral areas of world literature. The analysis shows periphery; Swedish; Italian; that Deledda’s success in Sweden depended neither on the Deledda; transnational translation of her work into central languages (English, French, literature German) nor on the support of single influential mediators in the target culture, but rather on the efforts of three interconnected networks of cultural mediators linking Sweden and Italy. These networks are identified, described and analyzed in order to obtain a better understanding of the features that are crucial to creating successful connections in the literary semi-periphery. Introduction How does literature cross national, cultural and linguistic borders? The scholarly answers to this topical research question usually draw from two opposing methodological perspec- tives: either a micro-perspective is adopted, emphasizing the efforts of single mediators, or the query is addressed from a macro-perspective, following theoretical models of how lit- erature circulates in the world-system of translations. Both micro- and macro-level approaches certainly provide useful insights into literary dissemination throughout the world, and yet they ignore some crucial aspects related to what I call multiple mediatorship, which is used in order to highlight the great number of individuals who are involved, more or less directly, in transnational literary circulation. As for the case studies of cultural mediators, these usually focus on single actors and their national literary contexts, but rarely on their ‘transnational relations and their participation in multiple cultural fields’ (Meylaerts, Gonne, Lobbes, & Sanz Roig, 2017, p. 68). The world-system approach, on the other hand, tends to focus on the larger movements in the international field, which often means literature circulating from the center to the periphery, while exchanges between the peripheries are ignored. Franco Moretti, for instance, has stated that ‘move- ment from one periphery to another (without passing through the center) is almost unheard of’ (2003, p. 75). According to Casanova (2004), literary circulation depends CONTACT Cecilia Schwartz [email protected] © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 2 C. SCHWARTZ largely on the position of the source language in the international republic of letters, and Heilbron stated that peripheral language areas import literary works from each other only after they have been translated into a central vehicular language, i.e. German, French and English (Heilbron, 1999, p. 435). When it comes to the relationship between semi-periph- eral languages, such as Italian and Swedish, the world-system model does not offer any useful insights. According to Heilbron, the semi-peripheral languages form an evasive cat- egory, consisting of ‘approximately six languages’ that ‘cannot be separated very clearly from the peripheral ones’ (Heilbron, 1999, p. 434). A more recent article (van Es & Heil- bron, 2015) does not provide any further clarifications about the semi-peripheral con- dition. Recently, however, there has been some scholarly interest with regard to this neglected area of world literature (Pięta, 2016; Schwartz, 2017). In this study I will focus on an author’s trajectory within the literary semi-periphery, namely how the works of the Italian writer Grazia Deledda (1871–1936) reached Sweden. I will show that her success in Sweden can be explained neither from a world- system perspective nor by focusing on single mediators. Instead, I argue that the spread of her name and work occurred as a result of multiple mediatorship, i.e. the combined con- tributions of several mediators as members of interconnected networks. The concept is a modification of the notion of multiple translatorship, coined by Jansen and Wegener (2013). Multiple translatorship is closely related to the issue of transnational literary mediation, as it stresses ‘the collaborative nature of translation’ and ‘emphasize[s] how agents interact, negotiate and struggle for influence in the various phases leading up to the translated text’ (2013, p. 5). However, the term also embodies other aspects related to the translation product, as well as ‘authority’, which makes it too broad for the purposes of this study. Moreover, the term multiple translatorship addresses literary translation rather than literary mediation. Even though translation is an important component of lit- erary circulation, it is not always central to mediation. To illustrate the situation concern- ing Deledda’s path to international consecration, I suggest that a combination of social network analysis and field theory can be used in order to make multiple mediatorship visible and offer a more nuanced picture of circulation in the semi-periphery. Why is Grazia Deledda’s case so intriguing? For a start, although her name is today almost forgotten, Deledda was once considered a European literary star, as she was the second woman, after the Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf, to receive the Nobel Prize in Lit- erature – a consecration that formally permitted her to enter the inner circle of world lit- erature. However, the Nobel Prize to Deledda is generally considered to be one of the most flagrant mistakes of the Swedish Academy. On the very few occasions in which Deledda’s name is remembered nowadays, it is either mentioned as one of the failures of the Swedish Academy1 or as an example of forgotten Nobel Laureates. Since the turn of the millen- nium, however, her work has garnered some vindication, not least among Italianists outside Italy (Heyer-Caput, 2008; King, 2005). From a Swedish perspective, Deledda is, after Alberto Moravia, the most translated Italian author of the twentieth century. Even though she became successful inside and outside the Italian borders in the first decade of the last century, Deledda faced several obstacles on her way to literary recog- nition. In many ways, she was born into the worst conditions for an author in spe:a female with only a few years of schooling, who was brought up in the small town of Nuoro in the Sardinian hinterland, which belonged not only to the European margins at the time but also to the utmost periphery of Italy. Deledda’s background and conditions PERSPECTIVES 3 were not ideal, nor were her works conceived of as particularly groundbreaking or inno- vative: her narratives – mostly folkloristic, romantic family dramas set in an almost archaic Sardinia – could be placed in the borderland of verismo (i.e. the Italian form of naturalism) and symbolism, despite evolving over the years into a psychological style of writing that was more in line with the modernistic tendencies prevailing at the beginning of the last century (cf. Heyer-Caput, 2008). Deledda debuted as a writer in 1888, and 11 years later the first translation of her work appeared.2 In the first decade of the 1900s she had an international breakthrough, starting simultaneously in Sweden and France, and from 1913 she was nominated 12 times as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, which she received in 1926.3 So how did her work and name reach Sweden? Was it due to many translations into central languages – as suggested by the world-system theory – or did she have a particu- larly powerful and influential translator, critic or publishing house in Sweden? In the fol- lowing, I will focus on the Swedish translations of Deleddian works published before the Nobel Prize in order to find out whether her works were supported by any single literary mediator, and to what extent this was dependent on translations into central languages (French, German, English). As shown in Table 1, up to 1926 five of Deledda’s works had been translated into Swedish by four different translators and were published by four different companies. Of these works, very few got any reviews at all in the Swedish press. Only Murgrönan (The ivy), published in 1926 by the largest and most influential publishing